Obama eyes super PAC showdown

National Democrats are banking on a long-shot strategy to shield President Barack Obama from an expected onslaught of outside GOP spending in the 2012 election: nuking the messengers.

The Obama campaign has long warned that it would face attacks from heavily funded Republican super PACs and other groups that can take unlimited contributions. Now, as several of those groups begin launching television blitzes, the task of defending Obama from their offensive has gained new urgency.

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A string of conservative groups — including Americans for Prosperity, the American Future Fund and the American Energy Alliance — have already assailed Obama on the swing-state airwaves with millions of dollars in negative ads. American Crossroads President Steven Law signaled in a New York Times interview that his behemoth organization might begin bombarding the president within the month.

Democrats acknowledge that matching those groups dollar for dollar will be a difficult challenge — Crossroads alone may spend up to $300 million on all 2012 federal races, including the presidential contest. Instead, the president’s campaign and the Obama-sanctioned super PAC Priorities USA Action are attempting to undercut the spending by tainting it in the minds of voters, linking it to oil magnates and other unpopular corporate interests.

“We had always prepared for special interests to spend a half-billion dollars in an attempt to defeat the president,” Obama press secretary Ben LaBolt said. “We’re asking our supporters to invest now to allow us to build the largest grass-roots campaign in history. And we’ve made clear that we will not unilaterally disarm.”

The fight between Obama and Republican outside groups has, for now, overshadowed the more traditional contest between the parties’ official nominees: in this case Obama and the likely GOP candidate, Mitt Romney. That has presented a problem for Obama and his allies, both in defining their enemy (or enemies) and raising money to fight them.

An early cross fire last week between the Obama campaign and the American Energy Alliance is a case study in how Democrats hope to counter unlimited outside spending. The AEA — a group linked to the much-derided Koch brothers — dropped $3.1 million into seven swing states to blast the White House’s energy policies.

Obama’s campaign responded by investing $1.4 million in TV ads in six of the same states — all of them but Michigan, which Democrats do not consider competitive in the general election — and getting an additional $291,000 assist from Priorities USA. Because campaigns can buy airtime at a lower rate than super PACs, that put Chicago at relative parity with the anti-Obama group.